Apple announces special event in New York on Jan. 19 — Apple on Wednesday sent out an invitation to The Loop and other media outlets to attend a special event being held in New York City next week. — Apple says the event will be about an education announcement and will take place on January 19 at the Guggenheim Museum.

Apple Aims to Take On the Textbook Market — Apple is expected to begin a much-anticipated foray into the textbook market at an event in New York next week. — The company sent invitations to reporters on Wednesday for an event at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York on Jan. 19.

Nokia Could Sell 37 Million Windows Phones This Year — If 2011 was the year of Windows Phone's slow slog to market, 2012 may be the year of its breakout. — With a decent selection of handsets in the marketplace — including Nokia's newly announced LTE device, the Lumia 900 …

The Year of Microsoft — How the former tech giant can reclaim its throne in 2012. — The old conventional wisdom about Microsoft was that you could never count it out. Sure, the company would always break into new markets with products that looked dead on arrival …

Microsoft Said Planning Marketing Shakeup — Microsoft Corp. (MSFT) is making plans for a companywide restructuring of its marketing operations, a move that may include hundreds of job cuts, according to people familiar with the matter. — The plans haven't been settled and could change …

Bringing Facebook Comments to Mobile — Today we're launching the Comments Box plugin for mobile to make it easier for media sites to engage people across the web and mobile devices, and for people to comment on news regardless of where they're reading it. — If your website has the Comments Box …

Exclusive: Microsoft Web TV subscription plan on hold — (Reuters) - Microsoft Corp has put its talks with media companies about an online subscription service for TV shows and movies on hold, according to people familiar with the discussions. — The technology giant had been in intense talks …

Why Samsung Is The Next Apple — For most of the ten years I've been coming to CES, every presentation, every booth, has had one goal: to create an ecosystem in order to encourage consumer to lock in. Year after year, presentation after presentation, someone has come out to show how the phone …

Study: Your Facebook Personality Is The Real You — If you think you're different on Facebook than you are in real life, you've got some explaining to do. — A 2011 study from the University of Texas at Austin's Department of Psychology called “Manifestations of Personality in Online Social Networks …

Shazam launches new app to replace iOS music player — Shazam has gotten a lot of mileage out of its music tagging application, which has been snapped up by 165 million users since launching in 2008. But now the company is rolling out its first new app called Shazam Player …

It's time to place the web in safer hands — David Rowan, editor of WIRED magazine, launches a fearsome broadside against the internet's global domain registry ICANN, concluding the organisation is no longer fit for purpose. — Sorry, internet: it's time to place your custody in safer hands.

Fever Dream of a Guilt-Ridden Gadget Reporter — I trudge past several million dollars worth of 3DTVs, looking for a good place to take a s**t. The toilets are all filthy. CES attendees are overwhlemingly men. Men are filthy, especially when they've been drinking too much coffee and eating Vegas buffets.

Homeland Security watches Twitter, social media — (Reuters) - The U.S. Department of Homeland Security's command center routinely monitors dozens of popular websites, including Facebook, Twitter, Hulu, WikiLeaks and news and gossip sites including the Huffington Post and Drudge Report, according to a government document.

What's Behind Intel's Expensive Ultrabook Push? — Intel is in the news thanks to CES, its new Ultrabook, and an incredibly ambitious—not to mention pricey—marketing push. But the real news isn't the ad campaign for Ultrabooks. A more interesting consideration is why Intel feels the need to do this at all.

IBM Wins Most Patents for 19th Straight Year — IBM retained its patent crown for 2011, topping the list of patent winners for the 19th year in a row. The only other U.S. company to make the top 10, Microsoft fell from third place to sixth place, according to data from IFI Claims Patent Services.